DL Open Thread: Saturday, November 11, 2023
Rethug Lawyer, Former NCC Councilman, Disbarred. Richard Abbott. Man, you just gotta read this opinion. An excerpt:
We cannot help but lament that a seemingly mundane lawsuit would escalate into a nasty feud and, in turn, prompt Abbott, an experienced litigator, to ignore fundamental ethical constraints, putting his privilege to practice law at risk. The genesis of this disciplinary action was advice Abbott gave to his client to help the client violate an order and bench rulings issued by the Court of Chancery. The advice and the documentation that effectuated it was followed by misrepresentations to the court as to the client’s status vis-à-vis the court’s order and rulings. And when the trial judge who had issued the order and rulings learned of Abbott’s dodgy stratagem and reported the matter to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel (“ODC”), Abbott’s conduct only got worse. Abbott eschewed a lawyerly defense of his questionable actions and, despite being previously disciplined for similar misconduct, unleashed a persistent flurry of false invective impugning the integrity of the trial judge, ODC, and eventually this Court.
I might add that this is the same Rich Abbott who, upon losing his reelection bid in 2008, filed lawsuits claiming that his opponents had lied about him. A real piece of work. And a now-disbarred former attorney.
BTW, keep those tips pouring in. We do read them. BTWBTW, sometimes the tips we receive have already been reported here–like the recent story about the Ag Secretary and the no-bid contract. Wonder what Carney will do about that.
What Do NYC’s Mayor And The Country Of Turkey Have In Common? Campaign cash, and lots of it:
F.B.I. agents seized Mayor Eric Adams’s electronic devices early this week in what appeared to be a dramatic escalation of a criminal inquiry into whether his 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers.
The warrant obtained by the F.B.I. to search Ms. Suggs’s home sought evidence of a conspiracy to violate campaign finance law between members of Mr. Adams’s campaign, the Turkish government or Turkish nationals, and a Brooklyn-based construction company, KSK Construction, whose owners are originally from Turkey. The warrant also sought records about donations from Bay Atlantic University, a Washington, D.C., college whose founder is Turkish and is affiliated with a school Mr. Adams visited when he went to Turkey as Brooklyn borough president in 2015.
The warrant, reviewed by The New York Times, indicated authorities were looking at whether the Turkish government or Turkish nationals funneled donations to Mr. Adams using a so-called straw donor scheme, in which the contributors listed were not the actual source of the money. The warrant also inquired about Mr. Adams’s campaign’s use of New York City’s generous public matching program, in which New York City offers an eight-to-one match of the first $250 of a resident’s donation.
The federal authorities also sought evidence of whether any Adams campaign member provided any benefit to Turkey or the construction company in exchange for campaign donations. (8-Ball sez: “Signs point to yes.”)
Time for a too-obvious musical interlude (although ‘the fez’ isn’t what you think it is):
Which reminds me–the coolest book I’ve read all year is this one:
Black and low-income voters delivered a stunning blow to Philadelphia’s Republican Party this week when they bolstered the coalition that the progressive Working Families Party has built over the last four years.
Compared to 2019, the Working Families Party expanded its support in neighborhoods across the city.
But the party’s organizers focused intensely this year on outreach in majority-Black neighborhoods where voters are often older and less politically progressive than in divisions with whiter, wealthier residents.
We have seen the future, and it is this. Excellent numbers-driven political analysis in this story. Read it.
BHL’s Friday News Dump. Once again, she is unavailable for comment. She and her husband are dirty, there’s no other way to parse this. Not to mention, we had heard $60,000. Turns out it was $300,000. It’s time for the AG to step in and investigate this:
Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long’s campaign quietly filed amended reports showing she loaned her campaign more than $300,000 over the course of six years, improperly reporting the charges as expenditures in earlier campaign filings.
The campaign said in a news release late Friday afternoon that amended reports were filed for 2016 through 2022 to correct “categorization errors” with campaign-related expenses due to Hall-Long failing to properly report expenses paid for with personal credit cards.
The errors revealed that Hall-Long loaned her campaign $308,134 over the course of six years. The campaign said these expenses – which included television advertising, yard signs, campaign literature and consulting – were recorded as expenditures in the reports rather than loans.
These weren’t ‘categorization errors’. This was deliberate and almost certainly criminal. Will anybody in authority DO something about this?
What do you want to talk about?
I know zilch about campaign finance reporting, but could someone with way too much time on his or her hand post somewhere the 12 “original” and “superseding, amended” campaign reports filed by the Lt. Gov, that are related to her credit card in-king (loan) outlays, I think the “loan/payback” explanation being offered only treads water if the credit card expenditures from BHL or her husband were originally listed as expenditures at the relevant time (this assumes that the BHL’s auditor reviewed all the relevant credit card records to verify that the all of $300K of claimed loan/expenditures were actually spend on campaign related purposes). Plus, the timing of the expenditures (pre or post election might tip the excuse one way or another.
Orcas strike again:
Oh, that Turkish quid pro quo for NYC Mayor Adams?:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/12/nyregion/eric-adams-investigation-turkey-consulate.html
“Federal authorities are investigating whether Mayor Eric Adams, weeks before his election two years ago, pressured New York Fire Department officials to sign off on the Turkish government’s new high-rise consulate in Manhattan despite safety concerns with the building, three people with knowledge of the matter said.
After winning the Democratic mayoral primary in July, Mr. Adams contacted then-Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro in late summer 2021 and urged him to allow the Turkish government to occupy the building at least on a temporary basis. The building had yet to open because fire officials had cited safety issues and declined to sign off on its occupancy, the people said.
The unusual intervention by Mr. Adams is being examined as part of a broader public corruption investigation by the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors in Manhattan that led to the seizure of the mayor’s electronic devices by federal agents early last week, the people said. The F.B.I. has been asking top Fire Department officials about Mr. Adams’s role in the matter since the spring, the people said.”